Maintained by Robin Tecon, microbiologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich. This blog is about bacteria (and other microbes) and the scientists who study them.

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Sunday, January 05, 2014

Communicating science in 2014: Public Outreach

A few
months ago, the magazine Science
published a special issue on ‘communication in science’. Indeed, the way
scientists exchange information has evolved considerably in the past decade,
thanks notably to the internet and the rise of the open access movement.
Conversely, older means of communication still fare pretty well; despite
predictions of extinction, IRL meetings are still flourishing, and so are
printed books…This year, I want thus
to orientate this blog a little more towards questions related to science
communication (internal and external) and how scientists deal with it. So I plan to write several posts
about the way scientists communicate between themselves and with society. Here
I want to start with how scientists communicate to the general public.

Science for the masses

Scientists
today are constantly reminded of their duty to communicate their research to
the public, and are encouraged to do what is called science outreach. I believe this to be fundamentally a good and a
fair thing, if only because the vast majority of science funding is provided by
the public society via taxes. In addition, and in my view more importantly,
every citizen (as well as society as a whole) gain at a better understanding of
science, this for pragmatic, aesthetic and philosophical reasons.

In a 1963
lecture, legendary physicist Richard Feynman pointed out that the society he
lived in was a highly technical one. But was it a scientific one? In the sense
that society had acquired a scientific outlook, Feynman noted it was certainly
not1. I hold Feynman’s statement to be as true today as it was in
the sixties, maybe even more so. High-tech products are everywhere (transport,
communication, agriculture, entertainment), but most of the times we ignore the
science behind the technology. As long as
it works, who cares? seems a common thought (to which I also fall prey,
often enough). And technology is not the only issue: public health is also of
great concern, as we live in the years of world pandemics, multiresistant
strains of bacteria, and so on.

The lack of
understanding of what permits technological development may be disheartening,
but more worrisome to me is how weakly the scientific mindset seems to permeate
the population. Is that the scientists’ fault? I guess partly, but I would
water down this by saying that this is society’s responsibility as a whole. But
maybe I am painting too dark a portrait here. After all, the public is overall
very supportive of scientific research. In the past couple of years, we even have
seen a surprising rush of scientists in popular fiction (think CSI, Big Bang
theory), which is probably a good sign. This means we have to keep up the good
communication work!

Science outreach in the 21st century

In the past
century, science communication was done in books and magazines, on the radio
and on television. At the end of the 20th century came the internet
revolution, and, needless to say, it has changed the game ever since. Scientists
can now express their opinion and showcase their research through websites,
blogs, videos, podcasts, social networks, tweets… you name it. Does every
scientist use all of these new means of communication today? Clearly not, but
many prominent and active scientists have embraced internet and its remarkable
power of outreach. Let’s see what nice
options are at hand:

Websites

Nowadays,
research groups that don’t have a website are the exception rather than the
rule. I believe that it also helps to make science more personal, as most
websites put forward the actual people that are doing the research. If they are well done, they should appeal to the
layman as well as the scientist.

Blogs

Blogs are
far less numerous than websites, for quite understandable reasons, but there is
nevertheless no shortage of them. Recently, Jonathan Eisen (Professor at UC Davis,
Open Access enthusiast and active blogger) came up with an impressive list of 100 blogs focusing on microbiology! We should not underestimate the power of emulation: it is after
reading Jon’s blog and others that I decided that I should embark on the blogging
boat as well. Personally, I enjoy blogging because it forces me to formulate
ideas and reflections, something that I wouldn’t have done if not for web
posting.

Tweets

OK, I admit
I’m rather ignorant here. I know scientists use it, but I’m totally
uninterested in Tweeter. I might be missing something big, here, but well… I
guess I’ll live with it (or rather without it).

Podcasts

Podcasts represent
the perfect blend of the old and the new: radio broadcasting and internet. The
American Society for Microbiology, for instance, is increasingly using podcasts to share information.

Pictures and Videos

The posting
of videos and pictures on the web is on the rise, and more and more of these are
made available to the public with few restrictions (for instance with a
creative commons copyright). Anecdotally, we learned that scientists can befunny, and that they like Lady Gaga (but who doesn’t?).

Wikipedia

Despite fair
warnings about the reliability of its information content, one has to admit
that Wikipedia is a fantastic resource! In addition, we know that everyone is using Wikipedia as a source
of information. Hence, instead of dismissing it, scientists have to make sure
that their domain of expertise is fairly treated, not contaminated with
misinformation, and up to date. This said, I haven’t so far taken part in Wikipedia, but I shall consider this in the future, for the aforementioned reasons. Wikipedia
pages may contain mistakes, but this is true of many other web or paper-based
resources, and at least Wikipedia is a dynamic system that allows multiple
corrections and clarifications.

Books, magazine articles, TV and radio shows, press
releases, etc.

Older means
of outreach haven’t become obsolete. Far from it. Actually, in my view the most
efficient and long-lasting ‘communicator’ still remains the printed book. There
are science books that deeply influenced me, in a way that no website could
have done, like Rostand’s “Pensées d’un biologiste”, Dawkins’ “Blind watchmaker”
or Russell’s “Scientific Outlook”, and all three were written for the general public.
What I mean to say is that new and old means of communication are complementary, and most often not in
competition with each other. I am delighted to see that I can download for free
on my e-reader plenty of science masterpieces that are in the public domain,
thanks to websites such as Project Gutenberg. Does that mean I do not buy
books anymore? Not at all. Even better, I will buy more books by contemporary
scientists, since I saved some bucks on the classics!

It is also
important that scientists write articles in popular magazines and newspapers.
And here I think that scientists are allowed (and should be encouraged) to go
beyond their strict area of expertise, and express their opinion as society members. Of course, “scientists” are not exactly
a homogeneous group or lobby, but we share values and an outlook that are worth
spreading. What is true for newspapers also holds for TV and radio broadcasts.

Press
releases organized by scientists and universities are important as well, but in
the light of recent controversies over their content and use (for instance, the
arsenic life story), I’d rather leave it aside, or rather save it for a longer
development elsewhere.

Let’s make this age scientific

Scientists
have now more communication tools than ever before. So there’s every reason to
be positive about the future of science outreach! To conclude, and to invoke
again Richard Feynman, I wish that we can make our age a little bit more
scientific. There’s a lot to gain for everyone.

Notes:

11. “There is no doubt at all that today we have
all kinds of scientific applications which are causing us all kinds of
advantages. And so in that sense it certainly is a scientific age. If you mean
by a scientific age an age in which science is developing rapidly and advancing
fully as fast as it can, then this is definitely a scientific age. […] But if
you mean that this is an age of science in the sense that in art, in
literature, and in people’s attitudes and understandings, and so forth science
plays a large part, I don’t think it is a scientific age at all. You see, if
you take, the heroic age of the Greeks, say, there were poems about the
military heroes. In the religious period of the Middle Ages, art was related
directly to religion, and people’s attitudes toward life were definitely
closely knit to the religious viewpoints. It was a religious age. This is not a
scientific age from that point of view.”Richard Feynman, quoted from the John Danz
lecture “This unscientific age”, in The meaning of it all (2007), Penguin
books, pp. 62-63.